There’s a new rival in town when it comes to choosing the right marketing channel for your business, taking the traditional offline route has its benefits. However, the most recent stats show that the future appears to be moving towards online marketing.
The numbers for 2014 show that 60% of small businesses will increase their online marketing budgets in the next year. A large contender in online marketing is social media, with 88% of companies planning to use social media marketing in the upcoming year. A large majority of businesses are moving to Facebook, Twitter and the like. Mobile marketing is expected to become the fourth largest marketing segment in the next two years, pulling ahead of traditional marketing on the radio and in magazines.
These numbers show that different online marketing strategies are becoming increasingly important, and are beginning to overshadow traditional marketing methods. Have you begun to wonder if online marketing is worth the investment, and how it could benefit your business?
Let’s start with the reach your business can achieve online. If you want your potential customers to be aware of your business, going online beats traditional methods by sheer numbers alone. On the global level, internet marketing reaches 30% of the population, while in some parts of the world, it hits up to 70%. If you are online, you will be where a substantial percentage of your customers are.
Facebook, a popular social network that is also used for marketing purposes, has more than 1.1 billion users. That is more than any single media outlet in the world! Don’t forget that 78% of people think that recommendations from their friends can be deemed credible, as opposed to 14% of people who think the same for ads. Facebook and Twitter are mediums for “word of mouth” recommendations and place you want to be tweeted about, liked and shared.
Once you reach your targeted audience, you have a variety of tools to keep your audience engaged. Content marketing is especially useful. Half of the consumers say that content marketing has an impact on their purchasing decisions. When planning your content strategy keep in mind that 61% of people will like your business more if it has a blog and 9 out of 10 consumers find detailed content useful. This level of engagement is simply not possible with traditional media marketing.
Lastly, a big advantage of online marketing is the analytics tool you have at your disposal, often cheaper than its traditional marketing counterparts. These tools allow you to see:
• how many people visited your business’ website
• where visitors came from
• how long visitor’s stayed
• how the visitor’s moved around the website
• whether or not your call to action worked
By using this information, you can constantly adjust your website to optimal settings in order to raise your conversion.
With online marketing, you can connect with your potential customers like never before in their personal space. Businesses are slowly being trusted and invited into that space to meet the needs of potential customers. While traditional marketing may still have its uses, investing in online marketing will keep your business relevant through 2014 and connect with customers in ways that are not possible using traditional strategies.
Do you want to discuss this more? Contact us for more information.
